PREFACE.
I should not have ventured to undertake the super- intendence of a new edition of the Works of Shakespeare, had I not felt confidence, arising not only out of recent but long-continued experience, that I should enjoy some important and peculiar advantages. The Duke of Devonshire and Lord Francis Egerton, I was sure, would allow me to resort to their libraries, in cases where search in our public depositories must be unavailing, in consequence of their inevitable deficiencies : this of itself would have been a singular facility; but I did not anticipate that these two noblemen would at once have permitted me, as they have done, to take home, for the purpose of constant and careful collation, every early impression of Shakespeare’s productions they possessed.
The collection of the Duke of Devonshire is notoriously the most complete in the world : his Grace has a perfect series, including, of course, every first edition, several of which are neither at Oxford, Cambridge, nor